Vegan Thin Mints

Thin Mints are a right of passage in America. A girl scout knocks on your door and you shell over $100 for enough Thin Mint Cookies to tide you over till the next time she knocks. Well Vegan Thin Mints have arrived!

I am a ridiculous romantic, a fool for love.

As the The Troggs’ song goes:

I feel it in my fingers

I feel it in my toes

The love that’s all around me

And so the feeling grows

True love, soul mates, I believe in it all.

When my daughter reaches for my hand (“nobody not even the rain, has such small hands“*), when my son leans his sweet head on my shoulder, this is all true love.

Dawn snuggles with our cats, exuberant greetings from those stupid dogs that live next door. SO much love.

The yearning that stains my heart when I think of my island is the longing of lovers too long separated.

The dopey look I get when the sky crackles with summer rain and I call a friend to puddle dance with me. Love.

The hushing melody of snowfall and birdsong that leaves me gazing out the window at the Black Capped Chickadees like a besotted fool. Love.

So when Valentine comes around I plan to wake my sweet dance partner of 28 years with a kiss and a batch of these Vegan Thin Mint cookies, then I will drag him out of the house for a run in the cold. Cause I’m annoying that way.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” -Louise Erdrich

If you are like me you will only use half of the peppermint filling and cookie dough and eat the rest right from the freezer in little nibbles all week save the rest for another special occasion. I’ll let you in on a little secret: When I first made this pliant playdough-like mint dough I wasn’t pleased with the slightly off white color. Having in the past used a smidgen of blue to whiten polymer clays I pulled out my food coloring and added what I thought was a drop but actually turned out to be a ton. The dough went from off white to ionian blue in seconds. Oh well.

This recipe will make 24-30 cookies depending on the size of your cookie cutter.

What you have here is a thin crisp cocoa-i cookie, topped with a silky arctic minty blast all snuggled beneath some serious satiny dark chocolate. Each element comes together easily with few ingredients. These treats are more than the sum of their parts and it is only when they are assembled and you take that first bite that you will moan with pleasure.

Course:
Dessert

Cuisine:
American

Servings: 24people

Ingredients

Crispy cookies

1 1/4cupswhole wheat pastry flour

1cupsugar

3/4cupcocoa powder

1/4tspsalt

1/4tspbaking soda

1cupvegan butter or shortning

2tbspnon-dairy milk

3tbspaquafaba**

1tspvanilla extract

Peppermint Patty dough

2 1/2cupsconfectioner's sugar

1 1/2tbspcorn syrup

1 1/2tbspnon-dairy milkI used vanilla "creamer"

1-2tsppeppermint extract

1tbspbuttercut into small lumps.

1/2tspvanilla extract

Chocolate

1cupdark chocolate chips

2tbspcoconut oil

Instructions

Heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line two baking sheets with parchment. Put aside

Make the cookie dough: Sift together all 5 of the dry ingredients in a bowl and and add to the food processor. Give it a couple of pulses to mix them well.

Add the butter, non-dairy milk, aquafaba* and vanilla extract to the food processor and pulse until a cohesive dough forms. Form the cookie dough into 2 balls.

Roll each ball of dough between 2 sheets of lightly floured parchment until you have an amoeba-ish rectangle that is 1/4 inch thick. Repeat with 2nd ball of dough (or refrigerate the 2nd ball and make another batch next week).

Allow the rolled out dough, still sandwiched in parchment, to rest in the fridge for one hour.

Remove one sheet of chilled dough from the fridge. Peel off the top layer of parchment and cut the dough into your desired shape with a cookie cutter.

Place cut out cookies on the prepared baking sheet with a good 3/4 inch spacing between cookies. Bake 12 minutes, remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Making the patties: Sift 2 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar into a mixing bowl and add the rest of the ingredients: corn syrup non-dairy milk, peppermint extract, butter, and vanilla. Mix well until you have a pliable dough.

Add a drop or 2 of food coloring. Mix to combine.

Roll out 1/2 the dough on a cutting board sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar to a depth of 1/4 inch.

Place board with rolled out dough in the fridge to stiffen up 20 minutes Remove from fridge and using the same cutter as you did for the cookies cut out your patties. Place the peppermint cut outs on the now cool cookies..

Melt the chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl with the 2 tablespoons coconut oil on a low setting stopping and stirring it every 30 seconds until melted.

Gently spoon the melty chocolate over each patty topped cookie until completely and coax the melted chocolate over the top of the mint and cookie. Allow to dry.

Thank you. Funny I thought I had created something new out of my obsession for chocolate cookies and peppermint patties and my daughter tasted one and said “oh you made Thin Mints”. So I reinvented the wheel. Ha ha. Thanks for the comment.

These look scrumptious. I’ll grab any excuse to play around with powdered sugar and melted chocolate (the tactile rewards of cooking). BTW I made your rainbow carrot pickles the other day. SO tasty! We had them as a side dish with tacos and everyone loved them. One of the carrots was a deep beety red-purple, which turned everything a bit pink. Even the dainty little cukes I added to the recipe (because, natch, I can’t leave well enough alone) were blushing.